jonathan duckworth

It’s difficult at first.There’s a yawning nothing around you that needs filling.

​Your fluttering wings like two basil leaves bracing together against a breeze that’s only perceptible because I’m sweating.

The faintly citric magnolia blossominto which you plunge your proboscis. If only the scent were stronger And linger in me just a bit longer then everything would be a Southern pastoral.

Time for a sight: white, white, white; too much sun, or at least too muchfor someone who’s spent the last few hours sinking into a computer screen’s event horizon.

And yet I’m no closer to you now than when I started.Do I ever really catch youor is it all about the color of the airbetween you and my net?

Jonathan Louis Duckworth is a current MFA student at Florida International University in Miami, where he works as a teaching assistant. He also serves as a reader and copy-editor for the Gulf Stream Literary Magazine.